Not sure if this goes here or in Random, or if anyone on this board could even help me with this, but here goes.

I'm looking for a numerical integration technique, which can be implemented in either Matlab or Maple, which can give me the area of a shape of rather complex geometry, defined by a set of discrete points. I've got ways of doing a rough approximation of this (ie the polyarea function in Matlab) but am considerably lost as to how to do this with a higher degree of precision. I am able to create a cubic spline for the shape, and I believe this may help, but again I don't know the techniques of integration which would lead me to my answer.

As this probably wouldn't lead to much of a group discussion, replies by PM would be appreciated. Unless, of course, there are more mathematicians on this board than I thought.